Comment by tshaddox

This doesn’t feel that new or surprising to me, although I suppose it depends what you consider the line between “science experiment” and “engineering R&D” to be.

Biotech has been a YC darling. Was Ginkgo Bioworks not doing science experiments?

Clean energy was a big YC fad roughly 15 years ago. Billions were invested towards scientific research into biofuels, solar, etc.